Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/26

 as the medicine reduced his pulse to 70, he became rational. Upon continuing it, his pulse fell to 50, at which time he became melancholy. An additional quantity of the medicine reduced it to 40 strokes in a minute, which nearly suspended his life. He was finally cured by lessening the doses of the medicine so as to elevate his pulse to 70 strokes in a minute, which was probably its natural state. In short, there is not a single symptom that takes place in an ordinary fever, except a hot skin, that does not occur in the acute state of madness.

IV. From its alternating with several diseases which are evidently seated in the blood-vessels. These are consumption, rheumatism, intermitting and puerperal fever, and dropsy, many instances of which are to be met with in the records of medicine.

V. From its blending its symptoms with several of the forms of fever. It is sometimes attended with regular intermissions, and remissions. I have once seen it appear with profuse sweats, such as occur in certain fevers, in a madman in the Pennsylvania Hospital. These sweats, when discharged from his skin, formed a vapour resembling a thick fog, that filled the cell in which he